Ben Macintyre. Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies.
New York: Crown Publishers, 2012.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
In the mid-1940’s, the Germans knew that an Allied invasion of continental Europe was forthcoming. Had they known the target area for what was to be called D-Day, they would have been well-equipped and fortified to crush the Allied forces. But thanks to “the most successful strategic deception of all time,” German forces were spread out in several distant locations. “The D-Day invasion would be protected and supported by a comprehensive, world-wide…campaign, a body of lies to shield the truth….” A key component of this campaign was “Double Cross,” a network of double agents, who systematically led the Germans to erroneous conclusions.
British Intelligence took advantage of Germany’s aggressive efforts at spying. German spies were to “conduct sabotage operations, infiltrate British society, and collect information on troops, airfields, citizen morale, and anything else that might aid a German invasion.” Because England had cracked the German “Enigma” Code, and because many agents were not actually Nazi sympathizers, not one German spy went undetected. Their most dangerous operatives were apprehended and removed. Others were recruited and turned by the British to serve as double agents, who would gain the confidence of their Axis handlers through delivering true, but low-level information as well as plausible misinformation. Controlled by the British Security Service, MI-5, the Double Cross system contained a nucleus of five spies of diverse backgrounds: Elvira Concepcion Josefina de la Fuente Chaudoir, a Peruvian playgirl; Roman Czerniowski, a Polish fighter pilot; Lily Sergeyev, a mercurial Frenchwoman; Dusko Popov, a Serbian seducer; and Juan Pujol Garcia, an eccentric Spaniard with a college diploma in chicken farming. Through the careful shepherding of these agents, Double Cross turned out to be the gem of the British Intelligence network.
Through several operations, the British had been trying to mislead the Germans. In Operation Jael, the goal was to persuade the enemy that the invasion would be in 1944. In Operation Torrent, the goal was to encourage the belief that Calais was the sole target. Operation Bodyguard had several objectives: to tie up German troops in the Mediterranean along the Dalmatian and Greek coasts; to dissipate German strength by suggesting attacks in northwest Italy, Bulgaria, Denmark, and Norway; to give the idea that bombing would take precedence over land-based assaults; to intimate that a Channel crossing would not be attempted till late summer. Operation Fortitude included several deceptions: assembly of a false army complete with dummy landing crafts and rubber tanks; creating technical deception through “a blizzard” of electric noise mimicking great armies where none existed; ordering and distributing an inordinate number of detailed maps of Calais.
Double Cross was controlled by an expert group of intelligence officers and handlers. The agents were to transmit reams of details to the Germans, much of which would verify the fabrications of the main “Intelligence Operations.” Each member of the “nucleus” had his or her own method of operation, each dictated and monitored by the handlers. One of the double agents led the Germans to believe that he had created a spy network consisting of 24 operatives within Britain. Actually, he was the only one in his network; he created all of the other reports. Another agent, working with a German military spy, came to realize that his counterpart was anti –Nazi and would be willing to send legitimate information to Britain. It was through this unexpected assistance that the British were warned of the development of the V-1 rockets.
The whole operation ran great risks. If there was any evidence that these agents had been “turned,” all of the misinformation that the British had been “spoon-feeding the Germans with a shovel” would have been discounted. The MI-5 controllers did a miraculous job of preventing any tip-offs through careless handling of intelligence. There were, however, some near misses which could have sabotaged the entire operation and exposed the Allied forces to greater risks on D-Day. Lily Sergeyev was annoyed when the British quarantined her beloved dog when she entered England from France; she later became infuriated when she learned that her pet had died while confined. She contemplated vengeance against the British; she could have simply added a dash to the heading of one of her communiqués –a sign that she was under British control and that she was sending misinformation. Such an action would have negated any of her work for the project. Johnny Jebsen, the anti-Nazi who worked with a member of the Double Cross nucleus, was captured and tortured by the SS. If he had cracked, “the great net of defensive lies… [would have] unraveled and the Germans would have been ready and waiting in Normandy….D-day would have ended in a massacre of Allied troops.”
Another interesting discovery is that there were double agents with British intelligence, working for the Russians. Kim Philby’s and Anthony Blunt’s betrayal of their country and the Allied cause has been well-documented. Ironically, their information was viewed by the Russians as being too good to be believed.
Those who have read of the D-Day invasion know that Hitler was adamant in his refusal to view an attack upon Normandy as being anything but diversionary. Several of his highest- ranking officers insisted that Calais would not be the main target. But Hitler and his intelligence chiefs had come to rely on the seemingly flawless lines of information coming from their networks of spies. Little did they know that they had been caught in “a tapestry of lies so thick and wide it would envelop the entire German intelligence system.” The great hoax was “injected into the central nervous system of the Third Reich.”
Ted Odenwald and his wife, Shirley have lived in Oakland for 43 years. He taught HS English at Glen Rock High School for all of those years plus one more. Now he is enjoying time spent with his family, singing in the North Jersey Chorus and quenching his wanderlust. Ted is also the Worship Leader at the Ramapo Valley Baptist Church in Oakland.